u/Available-Taro6730

**Demographics**

* Gender: Male
* Race/Ethnicity: White
* Residence: Not including
* Income Bracket: <100k
* Type of School: Public
* Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): none

**Intended Major(s)**: CS but applied CE at some

**Academics**

* GPA (UW/W): 95/100
* Rank (or percentile): Not Reported
* \# of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 8 AP/DE
* Senior Year Course Load:
AP Calc AB, AP Physics 1, AP 2D Art and Design, DE English, and DE Social Studies + electives

**Standardized Testing**

*List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.*

* SAT I: 1470 (700RW, 770M)
* AP: APCSP 5, APUSH 3

I would like to note my school is stingy about AP courses

**Extracurriculars/Activities**

*List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.*

1. Lifeguard
2. Swim team captain (helped summer rec team)
3. Crew team captain (fall and spring)
4. Band, section leader (played in every ensemble)
5. DECA qualified for ICDC 2nd at states
6. Roblox UGC creator, got like 5000 sales
7. CS50x completion

**Awards/Honors**

*List all awards and honors submitted on your application.*

1. NHS
2. College board National Recognition Program
3. 1x Highest GPA for varsity athletes in a season

**Letters of Recommendation**

**Interviews**

MIT: I thought it went decently well I could have improved some answer 6/10

Stanford: Nice interview as well I didn’t have much to ask about Stanford but got along well 7/10

**Essays**

Main essay: took a while, talked about my enjoyment in learning.
Supplementals: decent some were terrible but some I thought I did well

Regular Decision

Acceptances:

* State Flagship
* Union College
* Rochester Institute of Technology
* Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Waitlists:

* University of Rochester
* Case Western
* Northeastern

Rejections:

* Massachusetts institute of Technology
* Stanford
* Harvey Mudd
* Dartmouth
* Cornell
* Columbia
* Boston University
* University of Southern California
* New York University
* Tufts University

**Additional Information:**

I wanted to share because I couldn’t find a profile like mine originally and I thought it could be useful. Also if the list seems reach heavy it was just because they offered good financial aid. Going back I wouldn’t have applied to any Ivy because I really only did it for the money they would potentially give.

Committed
>!University of Southern California CECS (Appealed Rejection to fall Admit!!!)!<

Hi,
I wanted to share my story because during the whole college process it’s a pretty stressful time.

Firstly, I decided to apply to the quest bridge NCM and I was skeptical because my income was in a weird place as a one time source of income boosted it up a lot so it was a little high for the suggested income. This worried me and I ended up writing not great essays which I would attribute to me not getting accepted

Regular decision
After I got rejected from NCM I decided to wait for rd because I really was lost on where to apply to and couldn’t figure out what to write about in my essays(my common app essay got finished on December 1st). I applied to 17 colleges in this round. I ended up getting accepted to 4 colleges including my state flagship and waitlisted from 3 so rejected from the other 10. This bummed me out for a while but my state school is great so I happily committed there with a really solid scholarship(after a financial aid appeal). But during this I decided to submit a USC admissions appeal and I got admitted to Viterbi Fall 2026 for the computer science and computer engineering major. This was really a huge shock for me as I really lost hope. I just wanted to share that even after a long time waiting and a lot of rejections it can still be successful.

My advice
I would say my best advice coming from this is applying ea/ed to your dream school. It makes it a lot less stressful especially if it’s a school that has a significantly higher ed acceptance rate. Next I would say don’t procrastinate your essays until December. It made my Christmas break miserable. Lastly, never give up in this process it will all work out in the end.